Chopard

Louis-Ulysse Chopard founded his business at Sonvilier in the Bernese Jura in 1860, making pocket watches and chronometers. The firm moved to Geneva in the twentieth century, and in 1963 it was bought by Karl Scheufele, from a family of goldsmiths and watch-case makers in Pforzheim, whose descendants still run it.

Under the Scheufeles Chopard became known for jewellery watches, above all the 'Happy Diamonds' design of 1976 in which loose diamonds move between two sapphire crystals, and for sports watches linked to the Mille Miglia car race. In 1996 it opened a movement workshop in Fleurier, Chopard Manufacture, to make its own L.U.C calibres, named after the founder.

How to recognise the work: early pocket watches are signed L.U. Chopard, from the founder's initials, which also give the name to the modern L.U.C calibres. Watches from the Scheufele era are often jewellery watches; 'Happy Diamonds' models from 1976 have loose diamonds moving freely between two sapphire crystals.

Louis-Ulysse Chopard set up in Sonvilier in 1860, having seen that a finished watch was more profitable than a movement alone. After his death in 1915 his son Paul-Louis and grandson Paul-André ran the firm, which made pocket watches and women's wristwatches; it moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1921 and in 1937, with 150 employees, to Geneva, where its movements could bear the Geneva Seal. Paul-André took over in 1943.

In 1963, with no children to succeed him, Paul-André sold the firm to Karl Scheufele III, a goldsmith and watchmaker from Pforzheim who wanted a movement maker for his own business. The factory moved to Meyrin outside Geneva in 1974, men's sports watches and diamond jewellery followed in the 1980s, and until the Fleurier manufacture opened in 1996 Chopard's movements were assembled from parts bought in.